Children express love in any language

By Angela Romano

BRISBANE, Australia (JP): Forty-five Indonesian schoolchildren came to Australia on a singing tour with a mission to promote international understanding.

The strongest lessons on cultural diversity and the value of solidarity, however, have not come from the pleasures of travel or song but, rather, from the sharing of pain suffered in recent rioting.

The children from Jakarta's Pelita Harapan school choir, aged from 12 to 19, have been greeted enthusiastically by more than 1,000 children in 12 schools during their 10-day visit to Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

The younger Australian children have been especially excited, often spontaneously leaping to their feet to shake, sway and swing their hips in an unembarrassed boogie fever during the Pelita Harapan choir's performances of popular Western and traditional Indonesian songs.

Three of the Pelita Harapan girls, who danced in Betawi costume, found themselves surrounded after their performances by young Australian girls demanding impromptu lessons in traditional dance.

Some of the Australian boys who were eager to learn too but not wanting to admit it, would only copy the dancers' lithe gyrations and sinuous hand movements surreptitiously from a safe distance.

The younger Australian students have been particularly captivated by the Jakarta choir, begging for autographs and addresses and insisting that they don't want their guests to go after the performances finish.

The children at MacGregor State School, for example, groaned in unison when their headmaster told them only a few dozen could meet the Indonesian visitors. The rest left the living culture lesson to return with palpable reluctance to classroom lessons from dry textbooks.

Lessons in living culture have been taught both ways.

One Pelita Harapan student, 17-year-old Anastasia, admitted that media reports about Australia had given her the impression that Australians were "uncivilized"' and "racist".

The experience of staying with an Australian family changed her mind.

Helen Soewandi, mother of two of the visiting students, found Anastasia's comments to be typical.

"They are afraid of racism. They read a lot of negative stories in the newspapers and they have the feeling that Australians reject Asians. But they are accepted into Australian families who treat them like their own children. And they find that they are really nice," she said.

The Pelita Harapan students have also been impressed by Brisbane's clean air, large parks and green spaces, quiet suburbs and shopping facilities, even though most students could only afford to window-shop.

The cultural experience was at its most intense, however, during a performance for a Baptist church group, in which some of the students shared their experiences of the May riots.

The entire choir burst into tears during accounts by two ethnic Chinese students of their feelings of alienation and isolation after witnessing how so many Chinese lost their homes, their possessions and even their lives in the riots.

Some of the pribumi (indigenous) students, such as 17-year-old Fitri, attempted to express their solidarity.

"I don't think it should happen that way. I am not Chinese. I am Moslem. But they are the same as us. Some of us don't think that way because we don't socialize with the Chinese. There is a gap and it is hard, but we have to make a bridge over it."

Several parents and teachers accompanying the choir said they had not realized the extent to which the children had harbored emotional scars from the riots.

Anastasia said discussing such fears has strengthened the unity of the choir, despite the diversity of religions and ethnic groups represented in the group.

"We are much closer. There is a greater understanding because we have shared this and are more open," she said.

The value of diversity in the Pelita Harapan choir was also recognized at the Queensland Festival of Music competition, held in Brisbane on Oct. 18, where judges announced that they had been impressed by the richness and variety within the choir's performance.

The choir won second prize for their rendition of the traditional Tapanuli song, Modom, the Balinese song, Janger, and the pop song, Love in Any Language.

Fitting with the experiences of the choir, Love in Any Language has become its signature tune, sung at almost all its Australian performances, often prompting sentimental sighs from their young Australian audiences.

The choir of 40 girls and five boys return to Jakarta on Oct. 25.